PSO to present musical bouquet to mothers

PEORIA — “Daydreams,” the final concert of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra 2013-2014 season, is a matinee performance at 3 p.m. on Mother’s Day, May 11, at the Peoria Civic Center Theater.

The first half of the program is designed to be a musical bouquet in honor of mothers. Special guest artists Nina Yoshida Nelsen, a mezzo-soprano, and Jeff Nelsen, a hornist, will perform. The husband and wife musicians had their first child shortly before her debut with the PSO four years ago, so their appearance on Mother’s Day has special significance.

Jeff Nelsen, an acclaimed international hornist, is not only a teacher, mentor, writer and solo performer, he is also a trainer and has given talks on “Fearless Performance.” Jeff Nelsen will be featured on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 2.

Nina Nelsen will sing the sultry “La Habanera” from Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” along with a selected aria from Camille Saint-Saëns “Samson and Delilah.” Nina Nelsen has been hailed as a “rich voiced, expressive mezzo-soprano” by the San Francisco Classical Voice and “appealingly direct and honest in tone and bearing” by Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe.

The Mother’s Day concert will end with Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8, which is the composer’s most bucolic and idyllic. Also part of the concert will be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Magic Flute Overture.”